Posted on 01/10/2020 11:02:09 AM PST by Morgana
A pro-abortion amendment to the U.S. Constitution cannot move forward, despite abortion activists’ attempts to revive it past the deadline, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) technically would ensure equality for women through the U.S. Constitution. However, pro-life leaders long have warned that it would be used to end all abortion restrictions and allow unborn babies to be aborted for any reason up to birth.
U.S. Congress set a seven-year deadline for the ratification of the amendment, but it ended in 1982. Some pro-abortion lawmakers have ignored the deadline and passed the amendment anyway, including the Nevada legislature in 2017 and Illinois in 2018.
Virginia is expected to become the 38th and final state needed to ratify the ERA to the Constitution after pro-abortion Democrats gained control of the state legislature this month.
However, many have raised questions about if the states’ votes count after the deadline and if other states that voted to ratify but later to rescind their ratification also should be considered.
On Monday, the Justice Department basically settled the question.
“We conclude that Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a deadline on the ratification of the ERA and, because that deadline has expired, the ERA Resolution is no longer pending before the States,” it stated.
The DOJ cited statute 1 U.S.C. § 106b, which says that Congress has the authority to set a deadline for ratifying a Constitutional amendment. According to the DOJ, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Congress’s authority to impose the deadline as well.
National Right to Life Senior Policy Advisor Douglas Johnson said the ERA is dead, and no state legislative actions can resurrect it.
“The Justice Department opinion makes it clear that the current Congress has no power to travel back in time and alter what Congress, by two-thirds votes, proposed to the states in 1972,” Johnson said.
Ed Martin, president of the conservative Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organization, also celebrated the news.
“The radical left has tried every trick in the book to subvert the will of the states but their trickery is no match for truth,” Martin said. “The matter is closed. America knows ERA is bad for our nation and our Constitution. They have soundly rejected it over and over again.”
Abortion activists may challenge the decision, but Johnson expressed hope that the DOJ decision will be upheld in court.
National Right to Life has warned for decades that the ERA would pose a constitutional threat to all limitations on abortion. And pro-abortion groups now openly admit that the ERA could decimate laws that protect unborn babies and mothers from abortion.
In 2019, the pro-abortion group NARAL said “the ERA would reinforce the constitutional right to abortion” and “require judges to strike down anti-abortion laws …”
Years ago, Johnson said National Right to Life fought for pro-life changes the ERA that would have protected unborn babies’ right to life, but Congress rejected them.
Should the ERA be adopted, it would invalidate the federal Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortions in Medicaid, and all state restrictions prohibiting tax-funded abortions. Likewise, it would nullify any federal or state restrictions on partial-birth abortions or third-trimester abortions (since these are sought “only by women”).
Johnson said laws that allow government-supported medical facilities and personnel — including religiously affiliated hospitals — to refuse to participate in abortions likely would be in jeopardy as well.
To pass a new ERA, Congress would have to vote to start the process all over again. Amending the U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds majority vote in the U.S. House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
In December, Alabama, Louisiana and South Dakota sued to stop the final ratification of the ERA past the 1982 Congressional deadline.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said their states are “firmly committed to equality,” but the ERA should not be ratified.
“The people had seven years to consider the ERA, and they rejected it. To sneak it into the Constitution through this illegal process would undermine the very basis for our constitutional order,” Marshall said in a statement.
He said the ERA “would not promote true equality, but rather a far-left agenda,” including abortion on demand up to birth.
Won’t change anything.
Blue states will continue to pass it.
Next time there is a Democrat POTUS a new AG will do a 180 and....presto.....stroke of the pen, 28th Amendment.
The DOJ is correct and is simply enforcing a federal district court decision in NOW v. Idaho that declared the ratification window for the ERA expired in March 1979. Appeals to higher courts and the Supreme Court failed decades ago.
To revive the ERA, the Supreme Court would have to reverse its 1921 decision in Dillon v. Gloss and modify its 1939 decision in Coleman v. Miller. These two decisions form the backbone of the relationship between Congress and the amendatory process under Article V. Changing these decisions would throw the amendatory process into constitutional chaos, which is why the federal courts won't touch a state-initiated suit with a 10-foot pole.
The AG doesn't fit into the equation.
““the ERA would reinforce the constitutional right to abortion”””””””””””
The Constitution guarantees my right to keep and bear arms.
I have never been able to find the part that says I have a right to an abortion.
Women want equality with men. The seem determined to come down to our level.
Thank Christ.
Indeed, but I doubt it is a dead issue. They will never give this up. If this horrific thing became an amendment freedom is dead. It is as if the father of lies authored it. Once VA passes it they will wait until the next time they have both houses and the President and it will become law. They may even move on it before if they think the SC will back them.
No. Congress would have to pass it again. Good luck with it.
As the ratification window was closing in 1979, Congress decided to extend the window to March 1982. Rather than use the amendatory process, which requires a two thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, it chose to use the legislative process, which requires only a majority vote of both Houses and signature by the president. Jimmy Carter doubted the constitutionality of this method, but he signed the extension anyway.
In NOW v. Idaho, the federal courts got involved and declared that Congress used the wrong method to extend the ratification window. What Congress did was unconstitutional. Congress should have resubmitted the amendment proposal to the states for ratification by starting the whole process over from scratch, with a two thirds vote of each House to send it to the states for ratification.
Appeals to higher courts failed. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case because by then even the 1982 window had expired. The lower court decision in NOW v. Idaho stands: the ERA died in March 1979. Ratifications by Illinois and Virginia don't count and are just virtue signaling.
They can’t pass it, it expired. The amendment had a self-imposed, internal, time limit and it’s way way gone.
The Courts now interpret the 14th amendment in favor of women's rights so feminists can already get what they want without the ERA. So it is mainly a symbolic issue.
Your not using the VERY SPECIAL LEFTIST Rose colored glasses.
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